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Well yeah, basically everything stays the same, it is just a far higher resolution.. This is the change all UO players want, we don't want anymore "GRAPHICS OVERHAUL" We just want a higher resolution..
Everything get's palettized prior to the game having to deal with it, so it's not so much an client issue. Some of the graphics are greyscale, some are full color, and some are both. As far as hueing, the client finds a value in the hue nearest to the value of the pixel, and assigns that color to the pixel. You are correct in that it could introduce artifacts into the graphic in the form of "static" or, and most likely, patches where lots of pixels get assigned the same value, thus creating patches of flat color. But this would obviously only affect world art that's hued.Oh and by the way, if you're wondering "So what if it isn't "true pixel art" anymore, isn't the main thing that it looks good?". Well it's more complicated than that. For instance the palette system in UO which colors various assets in different shades. From what I understand, the original graphic is grayscale and the palette has been assigned to replace certain shades of gray with the new color. So it's looking for an exact RGB value to replace. And so when you bring the anti-alias "melting" of two colors into each other as in your algorithm example, suddenly there are thousands of new colors to deal with which the engine was not built to handle.
Well, since it's palettized, it'll be the same number of colors, but since there would be twice as many pixels, it does increase the workload.An additional problem, as JC mentioned, is of course the fact that more colors = more for the computer and network to load, which would already be stressed by the larger dimensions of upscaled graphics as is.
Actually, and I'll have to check, but that might have more to do with Isometric Vs. Military Isometric perspectives. I haven't been envolved a lot in the world art part of UO (although now my pipeline objectives are including world art processing), so I'm not totally certain.Thanks GO. I learned a new word today.
Would the orthographic disconnect have anything to do with the fact that the angle of isometric view seems different by a few degrees betwixt the EC and legacy clients.
Not trying to be an ass, just asking.
Uhh - a little off there:16,000 tiles (landscape, housing, trees, etc.)
10-15 frames for each creatures/players (only 108?)
Clothing items (hue overlays a grey object)
Special event artwork (the jack-o-lanterns are awesome!)
Hmmm... hmm... I just found this article in Gamasutra, published last month:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25703
I wonder if it would be worth pursuing more experimentations with these upscales after all...?